


Let the Sleeping Ninken Lie

by BC_Brynn



Series: Trust Your Nose [14]
Category: Naruto
Genre: ANBU - Freeform, Friendship, Gen, Heartbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24722500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BC_Brynn/pseuds/BC_Brynn
Summary: Genma thought getting drunk would numb the pain, but it doesn’t. It doesn’t.His ANBU comrades bear the brunt.“The bad days are the ones when the mass murder isn’t the bad part.”
Relationships: Mitarashi Anko & Shiranui Genma, Shiranui Genma & Yamanaka Inoichi
Series: Trust Your Nose [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/620383
Comments: 29
Kudos: 223





	Let the Sleeping Ninken Lie

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Huh, an unplanned interlude. It’s sort of a spiritual companion piece to _Fly on the Wall_ , but with a very different atmosphere. Last time Genma was sleep-deprived and gleeful.
> 
> This time he just wants to curl up and cry.
> 
> (warnings are included in the end note)

“I’m on in fifteen,” announced Boar, checking his watch, since _at any given time_ the ANBU lounge clock was more likely than not sabotaged.

“Last shift before you’re off?” asked Owl.

“Off for _two weeks_ ,” Rabbit sighed wistfully. “I wish…”

“Not worth wrapping that rope around your neck and tying the noose- I mean, _the knot_.”

It took Genma a moment to realise that it was _him_ who had proclaimed this gem of a sentence – but then, who else went pithy _and_ punny when emotionally unbalanced?

Besides, people laughed.

Some people, anyway. ANBU were mean. At least, most of them were mean. Sometimes.

Either way, Boar wasn’t amused, and he knew Genma too well to fall for the ‘just ribbing you, comrade’ façade. He read the undertone of bitter resentment clear as day – and shrugged it off. Shrugged Genma off. Which made sense, really – what else would you do with a supposed friend that couldn’t be happy for you?

That’s a shitty friend, and Boar absolutely _should_ shrug him off.

“See you tomorrow, Boar,” said Jackal.

Genma’s heart shriveled further until it was just an ugly tiny black thing.

“See you!”

“See you!”

The lounge was bursting at the seams with people sitting and standing around, eating and drinking and chatting… like a weird ANBU-esque bachelor party. It echoed with the chorus of ‘see you’s as Boar climbed to his feet, refused one last shot, and took his leave, flanked by Jackal.

Genma didn’t join in the salutations. He was not going to _see_ Boar tomorrow.

He wished he had the excuse of a mission, but the truth was that he had set his invitation to the event on fire. He wasn’t _that_ much into self-harm. And a shift on Iruka’s guard detail gave him an almost plausible excuse for not showing his face at the _event_.

 _We’re all fucked up here_ , Genma mused fancifully, sinking a little lower in his armchair, _and I’m the most fucked up because I’m the least fucked up_.

Well, second least. No one could be as sane as Lynx, which was one of the universal ironies, because the only one with history as fucked up as Lynx’ was Anko, and she was crazy like a mating ball of snakes.

Genma snorted. He was _hilarious_.

 _Mating ball of snakes_. She’d either piss herself laughing or try to kill him.

With as much alcohol in his system as there was now, there wouldn’t be much trying about it. Heh, _trying_. Dying would probably be trying, but the killing part would be a breeze for Anko, since Genma was _fucked up_ – in the _drunk_ sense as well as in the _battle fatigue_ one.

Genma waited until most of the party fell apart, ANBU walking off for their duties or their homes or a place where they could get better booze than disgusting, gut-rotting, possibly blindness-inducing ANBU swill. Once the exit lines were clear, Genma set his glass on the floor between the armchair’s legs (no skin off his nose if someone broke it later) and pulled himself up to his feet – with minimum wavering, even.

He set out.

He got as far as the corridor, even, before someone caught up to him to _talk_.

Genma paused, trying to decide what to do.

He didn’t feel like talking- or, no, that wasn’t true. Genma wanted to talk very much – he wanted to rant and maybe scream a little – but he was far too civilised to subject a colleague to the shitpile that was festering inside his head (and entirely unwilling to spill his guts to any of these clowns).

“I value all my comrades,” said Lynx, maintaining a less-than-polite distance of a single foot from Genma’s shoulder (understandable, since he had to speak very quietly if he didn’t want anyone else listening in). “I try to care for each and every one of them. No matter how hard they make it. But the thing is, sometimes, no matter how hard he tries, a shinobi fails.”

Genma thought, for a moment, that it was supposed to be a threat. But this was Lynx, and when Lynx wanted to threaten someone, he made their report sprout and bloom while they held it in their hands. It was a signature Lynx move, which no one else could imitate, and it packed a punch. Lynx never deviated from it. Not among _comrades_.

So this wasn’t a threat.

This was supposed to be life advice. From the guy who thought Kakashi was ‘a little too closed-off’ and Anko ‘might benefit from being treated as a person rather than an asset’ and _Iruka_ ‘has been desperately lonely for so long that he stopped recognising the emotion, and lives as if solitude was his choice’.

“Poor Lynx,” Genma said with nastier bite than he would usually employ, but ask him if he gave a fuck about anybody’s feelings right now. It wasn’t like anyone gave a fuck about _his_ feelings. “Doomed to eternally be the straight man for the entire village.”

“Dragonfly-”

“Don’t you get tired of it?” Genma spoke over him, gleeful over how many people turned up to watch the confrontation. “I mean, it’s gotta suck-”

“Dragonfly-san!”

“-when you’re the only one clutching your pearls while everyone else-”

“Fuck off, Dragonfly,” snapped a new voice.

Not Dove, surprisingly.

Silence fell upon the hallway – one in that grey space between awkward and expectant.

Zebra leaned against a doorframe. Even though he was tall and broad-shouldered, there was enough space around him that some of the familiar _herbal_ smell filtered out through the gaps between him and the wall.

“You’re with me,” Zebra ordered.

Genma wasn’t in his division – not that Zebra and Bear didn’t try pretty hard to get him – but he knew better than to not obey a _technically_ superior officer. Not even drunk off his gourd. Not even when he was pretty sure the other ninja was high as a cloud.

He turned on his heel, slow and careful in a way that completely betrayed his state to everyone watching, but at least he didn’t wobble. He should have gotten a B-rank pay for managing to walk to Zebra’s office in a straight line.

Zebra slammed the door shut behind them, and shoved Genma toward the bench where his informants usually sat. Not even a kami-damned sofa – just a bare, hard, wooden bench. Genma’s pelvis hurt just thinking about it, but standing around witlessly was too much of a drag (to paraphrase the _esteemed_ Jounin Commander) so he gritted his teeth and settled down. At least the room wasn’t actually hotboxed, like Genma had initially assumed it was.

The butt of a gently smoldering joint was dying in an ashtray placed semi-securely in an otherwise empty half-open drawer. That was probably as far from all the flammable shit within this room as it could get.

Zebra sat in his office chair, which was clearly much more comfortable than the torture-bench. He ignored the paperwork spread all over his desk – and his walls, too, with all the senbon-marked spots on the huge maps and the profiles of high-level targets being assembled (like bingo book pages, except with about a thousand times more detail).

Then Zebra released his genjutsu. His mask and bandana disappeared; all that was left was an exhausted (and chemically relaxed) Yamanaka Inoichi.

“Lynx is one of the most valuable ANBU we have,” Inoichi proclaimed.

Genma rolled his eyes. “I _noticed_.” Aside from all Lynx’ qualities as an excellent shinobi and team-mate, and one of the nicest, calmest damn people in this _village_ , there was the _Mokuton_. That alone would have made Lynx ‘one of the most valuable’.

“Then don’t treat him like shit.”

Genma almost rolled his eyes again. He and Lynx were _fine_. They were stuck somewhere halfway between colleagues and friends, and neither of them particularly minded that state of things. They worked together fine, and there were times when they showed concern for one another without offence being taken.

Lynx had just misjudged Genma’s receptiveness tonight.

“You want to tell me what precipitated that display out there?” Inoichi asked mildly.

‘Precipitated,’ Genma mockingly repeated in his mind. He didn’t think Inoichi was reading him that closely, but if he was, then _whatever_. And the question wasn’t an order, so he could get away with just saying ‘no’. Although, knowing Inoichi, and knowing that Inoichi knew Genma fairly well, Genma busting out and saying a straightforward ‘no’ would ring alarm bells and result in Genma getting invited for a _very fun_ date with a shrink.

 _Exactly_ what he wanted. Seriously, _nothing_ could make him happier right now.

“ _Love problems_ ,” Genma said with as much sarcasm as he could possibly muster.

Inoichi stared at him for three good seconds, before his face screwed up and he looked away.

Oh, yeah, right: Tiger. Genma hadn’t meant to do that – to stir up Inoichi’s still open wound – but it was still better than a mandatory psych therapy session.

“The bad days are the ones when the mass murder isn’t the bad part,” Inoichi muttered, with that odd cadence of a quote to it.

He’d know, huh? Lately there were a bunch of bad days, and Inoichi had had more of them than the average Konoha shinobi. Even more than the average Konoha jounin.

But today was _Genma’s_ bad day.

“Bleth me with your withdom, oh, taichou-thama,” Genma lisped around the senbon he had bit down on. He took a deep breath, unclenched his teeth and poked at the senbon with the tip of his tongue so that it fell out of his mouth. He caught it mid-fall with a sliver of chakra channelled through his lower lip. Silly fucking trick, but what else can you amuse yourself with on long stakeouts? “Should I get over myself? Should I cut off all emotion as the useless baggage it is?”

 _Tell me, Inoichi, you old bastard_ , he thought, _show me how huge a hypocrite you really are_.

As if Inoichi hadn’t moped around Headquarters to the point Bear was losing his temper? Which, to be honest, Genma had previously thought impossible. Inoichi just loved to mindfuck people. And that wasn’t even what he really got off on: Inoichi lived for figuring out how other people ticked, but kami forbid he did it without taking the other person apart.

Oh, was wise old Zebra giving Genma advice?

He who wasn’t on speaking terms with his only child?

He who didn’t know how to get back up when the death of his lover sucker-punched him (after he had _finally_ allowed himself to find that kind of companionship, even though he would never quite stop mourning his wife)?

And Genma got that part about never letting go. He did. He just didn’t want to-

“You could start by accepting it’s happening and trying to find a way of working through it,” said Inoichi.

-talk about it.

“Heal thyself, physician.” Genma spat the sentence like it was a venom-coated senbon. With a smile.

Inoichi paused for a moment, and then heaved another heavy sigh. “I know what you mean. I didn’t – distinguish myself. Lately.”

Genma snorted, because he was, apparently, that kind of a dick.

“That doesn’t mean you should follow my example. Why don’t you learn from my fuck-ups, young man, and _do better_?”

“Why don’t you lead by example-”

Genma was about to call Inoichi a ‘huge hypocrite’ when there was a perfunctory double-knock on the door.

Without waiting for a response from Inoichi, the door opened.

Anko gripped the frame in one hand so she could lean deep into the room, flaunt her cleavage and not fall onto her face in the process. Her mask dangled from her belt.

“I heard Dragonfly’s blown up on Lynx’ well-meaning arse. That bad?”

“Anko…” Inoichi sighed.

Genma stared at the wide grin on her face, and wondered when the hell had she found a whole solid fuck to give about him. Because for all the glee she projected – and Anko projected glee as a shield, so damn-near always – this was clearly a rescue mission.

“ANBU provide unsolicited criticism at their own risk,” he answered her question.

Anko cackled. “Oh, boooy. Ya wanna come home with me, look at my awesome poison collection, and tell me _aaall_ about what’s crawled up your pisshole and died?” She sounded like she was offering either euthanasia or sex, or possibly both.

Genma wasn’t in the mood for either. He thought he wanted to fight (not just spar, but really put his back into fucking someone up) and bitch (which, yeah, that was on offer there, too, wasn’t it?).

“You in the market for new friends?” he asked pithily.

“Ya offering, fairy-wings?” she retorted just as pithily. Then she toned her crazy grin down to something that conveyed _something_ to Inoichi, and grumbled: “Lemme take ‘im, old man, yeah? You know Chouza’s one incident from talking to your cousin, right?”

Inoichi said something so foul that it left Genma blinking into the dimness of the office. Whoa. He still had a lot to learn. Intel was an interesting place, that much was _blindingly_ obvious.

Anko laughed, predictably. She was Intel, too. Part-time, maybe, but only because she was too versatile and too unruly. Even her supervisors got tired of her, and appreciated the chance to see her deployed elsewhere for a while.

And Genma was, apparently, unable to stop being a dickhead today. It was that kind of a day.

“It’s your own fault, anyway,” Anko added under her breath.

Genma didn’t get how.

Neither did Inoichi. “ _My_ fault?”

Anko snorted. “Not yours personally, but yours as in _the brass_. Gen-chan asked for a fucking mission, _any mission_ , and you fucking refused him. As if you didn’t know what a ninja asking for _any mission_ means. What the fuck, Zebra?”

“We’re nearing the solution for the infiltration issue,” Inoichi whispered back, sounding fairly convincingly contrite, “so the enemy’s getting desperate, and Hokage-sama’s _rabid_ about protecting Umino-”

“Not a fucking excuse,” snapped Anko. “I could have taken Dragonfly’s shifts. I’d have volunteered to do double, and so’d Lynx, I’d bet my fucking arse. I already know Jackal’s doing half-again to cover for Boar’s little _ho-li-day_ -”

Genma twitched. He must have let out some kind of a sound, too, but he wasn’t aware of it.

Whatever it was, it made Inoichi sigh and Anko cringe a little. She let go of the doorframe, joined Genma on the horrible bench and flung an arm around his shoulders.

He only felt very mildly unsafe.

“Sometimes I wish we could stop being people when we put on the masks,” Inoichi said after a while of silently watching the _picture of comradeship_ Anko and Genma must have presented.

“It’s a fucking blessing that we can stop being ourselves, at least,” said Anko.

“Doncha know, ANBU feel nothing?” muttered Genma.

All three of them took the moment to contemplate the amount of irony in that statement. Genma was quite proud of producing it while too sloshed to stand up straight.

Eventually, Anko tightened her arm around Genma’s shoulders, almost like an implied hug, and instead of the sexual proposition he expected said: “In the immortal words of Uzumaki Naruto: _bite first, or let the sleeping ninken lie_.”

And didn’t that just say it all?

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: angst, alcohol abuse, drug abuse, heartbreak, PTSD, very bad language, unreliable narrator


End file.
